018: death prep / shark weak
Arns ponders how to best prepare loved ones for your death through the podcast Julie: The Unwinding of the Miracle. Nins dives into the transformative power of love as shown through Shark Heart by Emily Habeck.
Content warning: cancer, death
referenced in this episode:
Julie: The Unwinding of the Miracle Podcast Series on Spotify & Apple
The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-Williams
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
Writers' Block podcast: "WB_S3E30: Shark Heart with Emily Habeck" on Spotify & Apple
Interview with Emily Habeck by Nils Shukla for The Fantasy Hive
0:00 - Intro
3:04 - Announcements: merch, sob stories
7:29 - Arns: The Unwinding of the Miracle
25:13 - Nins: Shark Heart
49:45 - Outro
summary
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(00:00) hi I'm Angela Non I'm Ariana Kempis and this is brb [Music] crying hello everyone welcome back to BRB crying I'm Ariana also known as Arns and I'm Angela also known as Nins and guess what what we did it again oh my God we did we freaking did it we cried mhm and then we wrote a paper about it yes now we're here to read it to you welcome to brb crying our weekly essay podcast yeah what's up hanging out yeah yeah same I totally thought of something earlier today I was like oh I can't wait to tell Nins this during the episode forgot it oh 100%
(00:58) sounds right I don't know yeah was it like a cry thing or was it like hot tea or yeah was that hot I guess yeah I guess not if you don't remember I'm sure it'll come back to me tomorrow or something so okay text me anytime if it's the yeah let me know do you ever get my 500 a.m. texts and like like do you ever see the time of my text and be like I see the time of your text but like I obviously put my phone on silent when I was sleeping okay cuz I know I texted you like well before 6:00 a.m. this morning yeah you know what's
(01:33) so funny though so Arns and I we exclusively use Gchat to talk to each other when it comes to stuff on the podcast and we are talking on that all day long M and I sleep late at night you wake up super early in the morning so I'll usually send her something at like 12:00 a.m. she will send me something at 5:00 a.m.
(01:58) and it's G to the point where if that doesn't happen yeah my phone will be like suggestion message Ariana on g chat yeah oh my pH doesn't do that it's like Uh something's off today you haven't texted her yet or you haven't g- chated her yet damn maybe I can ask Siri to like embed that it's uh not spying on you as closely as it's spying on me I guess oh damn well how are you I'm tired yeah it's been it's been a busy few weeks for me at work will be another bus this job this job right uh contrary to popular belief I actually do work full-time on top of
(02:40) doing all of this outside of working business hours what a shame so uh yeah it's it's quite a load next week is going to be pretty busy too but you know what born for this you know she's doing this for you all doing it for all of you you're welcome welcome yeah that's what I got all right well anything to announce for us do I all right so you might see that I am sporting a shirt that says crying is self-care oh my God what a cute shirt thank you so much as of right now we still have some in stock but let me tell
(03:23) you we pre-record these episodes so we might not and this might be false advertisement and this might just be a let us know what kind of merch you want next time thing since when we're out we're out we're in high demand high demand genuinely though today we announced our t-shirt and hat launch in conjunction with my sister's brand curated Cultura and we almost sold out well the hats to be honest uh we sold out before we even launched them so well that's because we were like let's just buy a set amount who knows if
(04:04) people will actually buy them and oh my God you guys we are so I cannot believe I'm so in shock that people were like oh my God we want one we want one well it's a cute [ ] hat it's a cute [ ] hat honestly be surprised [ __ ] cute so it makes sense but I'm also just going to interpret that as major support for this pod which we are both so so so eternally grateful for yeah could cry about it could cry do might cry yeah it's been so it's been so cool it's been so fun like what a little journey this was yeah yeah yeah is I'm
(04:47) don't scare me like that so sorry um yeah thanks everyone and if we are sold out at this point then get on the newsletter then you'll hear about it next time when we have another drop yeah let us know what you guys want to see M totes handkerchiefs tattoos permanent [Laughter] semi-permanent um I have another announcement so we are going to be having a bonus episode towards the end of this season and it will be only soab stories so for those of you who have been submitting them don't worry we are not ignoring you we are just stowing
(05:31) them away for future use and we're going to talk about it on the Pod so keep those soab stories coming in yes please we love it I you know what's so funny the soab stories can get sent to us at any time of day and obviously my phone is glued to my hand so I see it come in and I could literally be anywhere in this [ __ ] world I I will open up that sob story I will read it and I will automatically cry no matter where I am mhm I've done it you have restaurants Target Target for sure MH but oh my God it's just so incredible like it's so
(06:14) amazing that people are listening to us [ ] and then taking the time to [ ] with us and share something so beautiful so incredible so vulnerable and uh yeah it it's it's been the best [ __ ] part about all of this we recently got one where I was like I didn't even know this person listened it was someone who is from our past and it was so cool like oh my God yeah so please don't be shy we love it we love hearing about it we love it we love it please please more listen you better send the help can you [Laughter]
(07:04) imagine just blew out our mics but um yeah keep them coming keep them coming and we will have an episode at the end of this season where we will go over all of these s stories yes oh I'm so excited for that episode know cannot wait cannot wait yeah all right well that's all I [ __ ] got that's all you got today that's all I got [Music] okay starting us off arm am starting us off I don't know why I did a dance I have a really sad one oh really that was like really weird I'm so sorry yeah starting us off today and I
(07:44) would like to start by explaining how I came across this story so a long long time ago some would say eons ago I was in search of a podcast that made me laugh as hard as it made me cry and I turn to the one place that never steers me wrong the one place I can always count on people to be real and true and good do you have any guesses no Reddit hello really where's this going do you do you go on Reddit I do but I just kind of scroll through the popular page oh no no no I am lots of Subs yeah um some of them I did not
(08:34) subscribe to so whatever but I posed that question to the oh you're like an active redditor did you not just hear me I didn't realize like I'll just like you know scroll through I have asked questions and yeah you're a mod to some channels aren't you like secretly I might be okay um so I POS that question and while I didn't find any podcasts that were specifically about crying like ours is I did come across a couple of suggestions that were actually really solid because it's Reddit and today I'm going to be reflecting on one of those
(09:15) suggestions and it is a limited series podcast called Julie the unwinding of a miracle have you heard of this mm okay so for today's story we are starting at at the end and by that I mean Julia Williams died on March 19 2018 at 42 years old after a 5-year battle with colon cancer in the wake of her death she left behind a husband two daughters who at that point were ages 6 and 8 I believe and a plethora of messages for her children in the form of a Blog and a New York Times bestseller of a book published poisly and this podcast which was an
(10:08) accompaniment to the book so it's three episodes that are each maybe 30 minutes plus a little 15-minute epilog so it's pretty pretty short okay it was released in early 2019 which was nearly a year after her death and this first episode opens up with the podcast's producer her name is Elanor Kagan and she is touring Julie's apartment in Brooklyn and it's in this highrise and they're on this floor that's high enough where you can you can literally see the Statue of Liberty and you can immediately hear that Julie has this really dry blunt
(10:48) sense of humor I looked at the timestamps literally within a minute of the intro Julie is talking about the wallpaper that her kids chose and she is like purple and blue butterflies I think think it's a bit garish and ugly but she loves it was like oh my God like who is this woman so we're introduced to Julie and we obviously we [ __ ] love her immediately and then the producer says 6 weeks after this apartment tour Julie dies so now we're going to bring it back back to the beginning I guess I should also say that the podcast has been
(11:23) obviously my number one source and also there's a little bit of a reference to her book book that goes by the same name so we learned that Julie Yip Williams was never meant to survive this long she was born in Vietnam in a family of Chinese descent right after the Vietnam War and she was also born blind so along with her family she survived this harrowing journey to America and by some miracle her mother who did not speak a lick of English found a child opthalmologist who was willing to try and Salvage whatever he
(11:59) could of Julie's eyes and she regained some of her sight back but she was legally blind so because of this she was forbidden from doing a lot of the same things that her siblings and her cousins could do she couldn't really travel with them when they would go up to San Francisco or something and her family just believed that she couldn't take care of herself the way her peers could and they kind of just told her that she was going to have a really hard shitty life and she probably wouldn't be successful and she would probably never
(12:33) marry probably never have kids obviously she was [ ] pissed and instead of throwing a tantrum like most of us would she took that anger and transformed it into this unyielding motivation so she not only convinces her family to put her in a regular public school and she has to use a magnifying glass to read but she ends up going to [ ] Harvard Law School which I know we all don't know what that is again I will link it in the show notes um and she has like this successful career as a lawyer and of course she marries and she has these two
(13:12) beautiful children so when at the age of 37 she was diagnosed with colon cancer and her husband was just so distraught by how low her survival odds were she wasn't really phased she was like I I have been through a lot as it turns out though death comes for us all eventually and it came for Julie so at some point during this grueling battle with cancer she settled into acceptance and instead of focusing her energy on trying to beat this disease she started to pour herself into preparing her loved ones specifically her daughters for her
(14:00) imminent death so I want to pause here and play a little bit of an excerpt and this is from episode one so I just played a little clip for nins and in this quote Julie is writing a letter to her daughters and their family's big on piano and violin so in her letter she says sometimes when you practice your instruments I close my eyes so I can hear better and when I do I am often overcome with this absolute knowing that whenever you play the violin or the piano when you play it with passion and commitment the music with its special
(14:38) power will beckon me and I will be there and in her book she continues this letter and she says even long after you've chosen to stop playing I will still come to you in those extraordinary and ordinary moments in life when you live with a complete passion and commitment it might be while you're standing at top of mountain marveling at exceptional Beauty and filled with pride in your ability to reach the summit or when you hold your baby in your arms for the first time or when you're crying because someone or something has broken
(15:12) your tender heart know that your mother once felt as you feel and that I am there hugging you and urging you on so the main reason why Julie started a Blog and was so intent on finishing her Memoir before she come to cancer was that she wanted to leave something behind for her daughters so you hear this all throughout the whole podcast and as they said in the podcast excerpt the point of it all was not to live as long as possible but to die as honestly as possible and earlier in this letter she reflects a little bit on her
(15:51) daughter's motherless future and Julie says you will be deprived of a mother as your mother I wish I could protect you from the pain but also as your mother I want you to feel the pain to live it embrace it and then learn from it be grateful in a way that only someone who lost her mother so early can in your understanding of the precariousness and preciousness of life this is my challenge to you my sweet girls to take an ugly tragedy and transform it into a source of beauty love strength courage and wisdom how old are her kids at this point they
(16:31) were 6 and 8 and this was back in 2018 so I'm not going to walk through every single aspect of Julie's life unfortunately for you all I'm not going to spend this podcast episode reciting someone else's podcast episode because that would be like weird and probably illegal all I will say is that Julie's story is incredible heartbreaking beautiful and it's full of so many hard truths that only a person who's really staring death in the face can impart so I urge you all please listen to it read her book and yeah the
(17:11) podcast is pretty short but because this is a podcast about crying I want to share one of the parts that made me ugly cry a little so towards the end of the podcast Julie is weeks away from her death at this point and her sister and her cousins have flown into new New York to spend their last moments with her and there are a ton of audio clips about them Reminiscing on their their sh childhood growing up with parents and grandparents who were just like absolutely negligent um I was lit like I was laughing out loud at this point they
(17:49) were talking about like the Summers they spent all day at the pool and they were like we didn't know how to swim like like eight of them just there they're like but we taught ourselves [ __ ] um they also talk about going to Circus Circus in Vegas and getting like being given like $40 worth of quarters and then they would be left from like 9 to 5 while their parents gambl they were like okay um so yeah it's it's so oh God it's so funny but throughout this whole recollection They're laughing so hard and they're having such a great time
(18:23) that you almost forget why they're there and then they start to get into you the real stuff so let me play it's a it's about a 3-minute clip and for anyone who wants to listen along this is episode 3 around the 15 and 1 half minute Mark so in this excerpt I played nins Julie is talking to her cousins and her sister about how she has her whole life always made the brave Choice when given that prompt would you choose a life that's even killed or a life of ups and downs and I always said ups and downs I'd rather have a life full of lessons
(19:00) and meaning and something more I want the kids to have stories and her cousin says you can hear her cousin's voice breaking and she's like you've been so smart about trying to leave the kids with some memories about you since the day you found out you had cancer and Julie says and memories about you too all of you and then her cousin really breaks down and she says the words that they've all kind of just been skirting around and she says see I'm going to miss you so much and Julie quietly says I know and then
(19:33) she says don't worry I'm going to come haunt you um and I know this all sounds so obvious and it's a lesson that we come across time and time again but we spend so much of our life not living just [ __ ] doing and we skirt around these topics and avoid these hard conversations and even on Julie's deathbed it took hours of them reminiscing before they finally got to this and this just kind of broke me because we've spent this whole podcast understanding the Legacy that Julie wants to leave for her children and how
(20:08) she's found beauty and experiencing death in this quote unquote unwinding of a miracle so to speak but in this moment we are listening to grief in its rawest form and it's so painful to hear and I kind of find myself wondering how do you really prepare someone for grief like can you even can you even prepare them you know that Julie is doing all of this to prepare her loved ones and yet as this conversation proves no matter what you do this pain is still unbearable it still must be felt and on top of this I think this
(20:50) particular segment stood out to me so much because again the whole podcast were like how is Julie going to prepare her kids and we forget that there are other people who love Julie too I know nins you and I talk a lot about girlhood and how special it is to grow up as girls together and this group of women had all of that too they spent the last 30 40 years growing up together and loving each other and just experiencing life together but this scene gives us a glimpse of what awaits on the other end of girlhood and it's a group of girls just
(21:37) being girls together one last time and I don't really want to think about what it will look like when I have to say goodbye I don't think any of us want to face that but maybe the reason why stories like Julie affect us so much is we know we know how precious this life is and yet we still spend our days doing [ ] we don't care about for people we don't care about and deep down we know we can't go on living like this and letting time slip Us by because what the [ ] is the point of all of it if not to love and be
(22:15) loved even if we don't get to leave behind a memoir or a podcast or New York Times bestseller or a record of all these conversations I hope that Julie's story just lights of fire underneath us to hug and squeeze our loved ones and really give them our undivided attention when they're talking to us and just let them know that they make our lives worth living so that when it comes time to let go there's no rushed Whispers And there's no desperation there's no air of regret there's just this I'm really going to miss you and then that's
(23:00) it it was beautiful I mean I haven't listened to it yet yeah but the concept alone this is what I want to leave my kids Behind heartbreaking I already know you're going to cry oh yeah but that that story behind the story we've talked about this on other episodes before where it's like there is that hesitation to appreciate people and show that appreciation and vocalize that appreciation for people but this is a testament to why hold back just let people know how much you love them yeah as often as you can whenever you can not at the very end
(23:45) no tell your girls you love them dude love you ARS love you I really do I really love you like I just hope that I love everyone around me so hard that there's no doubt how much I love them yeah and that truly like all that's left to be said is I'm just going to [ __ ] miss you you know yeah thanks Julie thanks Julie the epilog is so cute it's like about how she's haunted the people yeah cuz she was so adamant she was like I need a special sign like you're going to know exactly again preparing her left one she's like you're going to know exactly
(24:30) when it's like me and it's just it's so good GH it's so good it's funny because In that clip that you shared mhm where the cousin was like I'm just going to miss you so much it was like immediately a joke which I get you know I mean we're not all walking around being sappy all day long I mean we can you and I can we could but we also just have to throw in that humor in there too it's just so it's just so natural it just comes out yeah but maybe we Linker on that I'm going to miss you part a little bit longer yeah
(25:05) that's okay to feel that [Music] yeah are you going to dig me out of this hole I'm really not I'm really not because our stories are so similar today really oh my god oh wait really well different angles okay okay but very similar I'm excited I mean if it's about something similar to mine I guess I shouldn't be like but yeah definitely very good complimentary stories to one another listen we do not plan this this is just the synchronicity that happens when you've been best friends for like 25 years and you're the same
(25:53) person yeah okay well it's going to be another heavy one one so I'm going to start us off lightly please I'm going to ease us into this ease Me In by bringing up a viral tweet from 2019 okay so this is from the user at shut your hell and this person tweeted me crying at 3:00 a.m.
(26:26) husband oh my God what's wrong me shaking nothing him it's okay just say it me I don't know I just feel like if we were born as worms you wouldn't like me would you even marry me whatever just forget it so all thanks to this tweet mhm there was a very random Trend in 2019 where people were going around asking their Partners would you still love me if I would was a worm do you remember this no okay not really I think we occupy like adjacent corners of the internet not the exact same definitely not no you were on Twitter and I was not yeah this was
(27:11) definitely a running joke for a good hot minute okay so there is an author named Emily Havoc who I suspect may have come across this trend and just took this idea and ran with it ooh I mean unconfirmed but if this is the case she really [ __ ] ran with it and she just wrote this book okay she she wrote the most beautiful book and that is what I'm going to be talking about today a book that has instantly instantly made it to one of my top reads of all time and if you have subscri red to our substack you will have seen me
(28:01) mention this in a past slowburn wreck and this book is called Shark heart and again it was written by Emily havoc and published in 2023 her debut novel what okay what's what's with the life-altering debut works of art recently leave me alone you know I'm attacked it God okay sources aside from the book an interview the author did with the friends and fiction writers block podcast with Ron block and another author interview with Nils Shukla for the fantasy Hive so this book is told in three parts and yes I will be revealing some major
(28:58) spoilers but those spoilers will be contained to part one of the story and if I'm going to be completely honest if you read the back of the book you kind of know where this is going so not really a true spoiler you know what I mean but please like babe I read a lot of books okay and I'm telling you this one is really [ ] good so please like please read it I know you've already added it to your liby six week waight list baby okay [ ] should I just buy it maybe maybe I'll buy it and it'll just end up on your doorstep the next
(29:35) day I would love that it's not like I haven't done it before it has happened before you know I was thinking about that I still haven't covered that book it's okay whatever okay today this is we're talking about this one okay all right so yes please please read this book if you want to read it before listening to me talk about it I will forgive you just make sure you bookmark this episode C and come back to it when you're done reading otherwise listener discretion advised and before I jump into the plot I do kind of want to go over the style
(30:11) of this book because it is pretty creative so like I mentioned book is divided into three parts with several chapters in between and the author combines a variety of storytelling techniques for every chapter of this book so some of the chapters are your standard third person narrative other chapters are written as a scene in a play and other chapters are just basically poems it's like a hodge podge of writing styles and the chapters are short and the writing while so profound and so beautiful it's not pretentious or
(31:03) intimidating at all and I personally think that I am kind of a slow reader like I really like make sure that I'm absorbing every single word and even then I just zoomed through this book it reads very fast and the only reason it took me longer than it should have is because I kept [ ] crying you know put down the iPad just to [ ] cry while reading mhm why the [ __ ] did she write this okay so shark Heart part one of this book is about a married couple you have a man named Lewis and you have a woman named
(31:48) Ren like the bird and they are the total opposites of one another lewiis is a dreamer he's an actor who yearns to perform on stage in front of a live audience and his mind is always preoccupied with creating art and finding Beauty in the world and looking for the deeper meaning to it all and ren is a realist very grounded in reality organized methodical good with numbers upfront and she always has a plan so yeah opposites but they're also the perfect compliments to each other and so they fall in love and they get married and here is a quote from the
(32:44) book about their wedding their wedding was intimate and lovely but practical just like their relationship which had never been an inferno of public passion or an opulent material display of caring as Lewis held Ren's hand he thought of her kindness her intelligence her inner beauty yet just as he married these known qualities he also married her vast unknowns and she his the most beautiful marriages will bear the weight of challenge one day but for an evening the challenge was hypothetical for an evening Ren and lewi
(33:28) were the lucky ones it was their time to be happy so yeah I picked that quote for a variety of reasons I think it really does give you kind of a sense of it's almost like that Fric Bachman style of writing where it's just very simple I can't wait to read this [ __ ] book it's it's oh God okay so shortly after they get married they're living in honeymoon Bliss they have a house to together Ren has a successful career at an Equity Firm Lewis is a Drama teacher in their Town's high school they have plans to go to Paris in the summer but then all of a
(34:12) sudden Lis starts noticing some weird things happening to his body so for all my healthc Care Professionals out there here are a list of his symptoms his nose starts to get softer he can push it into his face he's thirsty all the time but he rarely pees no matter how much he drinks his teeth are getting looser and he feels sharper pointier teeth growing in their place his skin is getting rougher by the day it almost feels like sandpaper and his mood is fluctuating this very gentle soul starts getting flashes of aggression and he's
(35:01) also all of a sudden really Nimble and has super fast reflexes so at the urging of his wife he goes to the doctor and then two days later he gets the news of a devastating diagnosis he has carodon carcarius which essentially means he's turning into to a great white shark oh did I mention this book was magical realism this is historical fiction I believe so in this world there is a known mutation that can inflict people at random and these people over the course of several years or several months depending on the type of mutation
(35:58) will slowly transform into different animals so for LS that means over the next n months his body will slowly morph into that of a great white shark he'll lose his limbs he'll develop gills he'll grow three rows of pointy Jagged teeth and eventually there will be a point where he'll have to say goodbye to everything he knows and live the rest of his life in the deep blue sea and Lewis doesn't tell Ren at first he avoids it which I feel like I could totally see if something was that devastating you just kind of want to
(36:49) squash it deny it but soon enough he tells her he sits her down and he tells her great white shark Ren's forehead crinkled her gaze drifted to the concrete floor they say the first year of marriage is the hardest she said at last as she squeezes his hand it was the most hopeful thing anyone could have said a bypassing of the truth because there would not be another year to measure against this first one so I know that this diagnosis and this mutation sounds ridiculous and Fantastical and I think obviously that's
(37:38) part of the charm of the story but it is very clearly a metaphor for having a fatal illness strip away all the parts that make you who you are how do these physical changes reflect our internal transformation and even more heartbreakingly how does this affect those that fell in love with the version of you before it all started these are the questions that Lewis and ren this young couple who thought they had their whole lives ahead of them now have to face so God I'm just going to sigh throughout this whole [ __ ] story
(38:25) okay so the next step several months of their life this illness becomes the center of their world Lewis slowly starts to lose autonomy over his body he grapples with having to say goodbye to his art and his students everything he loves about The Human Experience they go to doctor's appointments they try out support groups and this relationship then becomes this imbalance what was once this happy marriage then turns into one becoming the sole caretaker of the other and these chapters are you know sometimes they're silly sometimes
(39:12) they're sad but they really do capture that mundane part of a sickness where nothing is dire yet so in instead you start to feel this resentment towards your partner or you're trying to do what you can but you just don't know what to do or say to make things any better and then to top it all off outside of this marriage you also have to deal with other people in your circle not knowing what to say or how to act around you because again his illness was like a very physical transformation something that you can't really
(40:00) ignore but for Ren and Lewis the worst part of it all of course is this pressure to squeeze in a lifetime of love in the limited amount of the quiet conversations they have left the numbered knights in each other's arms but as is life even during the shittiest of times there can still be these really beautiful moments and there's the scene where Lewis and ren are just having a quiet dinner at home this was shortly after Lewis had revealed his diagnosis and they're both lost in their own thoughts avoiding talking about the
(40:47) elephant in the room the shark in the room and all of a sudden Lewis turns on some music he takes Ren's hand and they dance through the music swells they swayed and they knew and they melted and they knew and they knew and they knew everything would be different and difficult soon when the movement was over Ren held his ears softly framing his face with her hands tonight's a strawberry moon Louis said we should go to bed Ren replied it's late a moon like this won't happen again until 2086 we'll be 100 years [Music]
(41:37) old obviously so many parallels with the story that you're telling today and it's I think the hardest part with all of this is that slow goodbye it just makes it that much crer there's so much you want to say there there's so much you want to treasure I can't look at everything hard enough Lewis whispered into the Stars again and again so every day Lewis loses more of himself and yet they still desperately hold on as tight as they can and as we near the end of part one where Lewis's transformation is almost complete he's wheelchair bound because
(42:27) he has a tail where there should be two legs his head shape is flat and elongated and he no longer feels comfortable unless he's in the makeshift above ground saltwater pool they set up in the backyard but even more jarring is the fact that LS this gentle soul this artist he's becoming dangerous and violent he has these moments of rage where he's no longer in control of his body and after a particularly bad event the doctors are like listen it's time so Lewis and ren are forced to accept this truth and they pack everything up and
(43:22) Trek on this weekl long road trip to California from Dallas so that they can release him into the ocean and so they make their way to the beach Ren sets him on the sand and she's like okay hold on I'll be right back she runs back up to the car she comes back she's carrying she's carrying scuba diving equipment and she's telling Louis leis I have this plan I'll stay with you I'm going to come with you I'll be with you and then I'm going to go back to Dallas I'm going to buy a house boat and I'll follow you I'm
(44:05) going to follow you into the ocean and then pretty soon there will be a cure and you're going to come back and we're going to have a home and we're going to have a kid and we're going to have the life that we had always wanted together Lewis found himself in an unusual position he was typically the one with impossible ideas trying to convince Ren of their feasibility now he knew what it felt like to be on the other side he wanted to argue with her tell her it might be dangerous for them to be together that he couldn't count on himself to protect
(44:45) her in the ocean that he himself might be the danger at the same time Lewis felt proud Ren his practical enduring wife was dreaming so Louis has to talk her out of this and he's like Ren this is not going to work we have to say goodbye what if this is just the natural order of things it doesn't mean we don't love each other maybe it means we do and so they have this one last conversation on the beach and Louis is telling her all this last minute advice call my dad when the bathroom sink gets leaky and I think I left a box
(45:43) of shirts that I forgot to donate you can use that to clean the car all this trivial stuff and then they say goodbye and he swims out to the Sea and that's the end of part one of this book whole ass [ ] novel left and you're already [ ] dying crying reading this but this goodbye wrecked me because this whole time we're so focused on this physical strangely fascinating transformation that Lewis is undergoing and you're sitting there and you're also dreading the inevitable that moment where they have to say goodbye and in this last
(46:38) conversation you realize that this whole time Ren was becoming a dreamer and Lewis was becoming the realist they were both transformed not because of this illness but because they loved each other they changed one another and so when we go back to this question that they were asking themselves at the start what happens when the person I fell in love with isn't the same this book and this story this marriage between Lewis and ren just proves that loving someone means that you love all of them everything that they are and everything
(47:30) that they're not and everything they have yet to become read the [ ] book oh my God yeah that was just a little taste and um I can't wait to read it at the same time I'm like oh I know it's going to be so painful but I find myself trying to be present through that pain and not dreading it so much as just bracing myself to know what's coming and then like holding myself through it yeah yeah I mean obviously I touched on a lot of the heavier scenes in the book but I think it it captured so well like realistically what the [ ] would we do
(48:19) I mean because it's like oh [ ] I'm going to be really [ ] sad when he has to leave but then on a random Tuesday you're you're going to be tired after work and you're going to be like do I have to prepare you you know 8 pounds of raw fish or can I just [ ] watch Game of Thrones you know like it it goes back and forth of just the typical dynamics of a relationship yeah but yeah I think that's why it affected me so much because I very much like the style of like not telling you but showing you MH and she [ ] showed me she showed
(48:58) you you know what I mean she showed up oh God so Emily M girl you did it so yeah I mean the whole time that you were telling me your story I was like w this is so similar today but I do think different angles to a very similar story yeah I know I spent a lot of time kind of going over like Lewis's story but you do get a lot more of Ren in this book and what she had to go through as the person watching this her husband her partner the love of her life go through this and that's what I [ __ ] got oof yeah these were heavy mhm but you know
(49:49) what they made us cry so we had we had to talk about it oh did they did they to end it on a light note if you are that kind of person that the moment you get a book wreck you instantly look it up on good reads and you see what the ratings are I [ ] saw that this had like four out of five stars and I was like who the [ ] right so obviously I like look right away at like the people who are giving it one stars and they're like people don't turn into sharks I'm like a yeah like oh my God like sharks P I don't
(50:30) understand like I could not get past that really you really you couldn't [ ] get past that I can't get past you wow so annoying so please you heard it from me first if you trust my opinion don't [ ] read those reviews this book is [ ] incredible so God that is you dare that's like the person on Yelp who says one star they were closed no yeah you get it I was like who the [ ] is this WOW there you go ended it a little light thank you and by light I mean angry anything but the sadness yeah well thank you for tuning in
(51:14) everyone I know this was a little heavier so thank you for sitting with us and sitting with your emotions and your heartbreak too yeah listen life is sad mhm it's also pretty funny yeah we got it both here on the Pod we do yeah and if you want more follow us on our socials beb crying. podcast sign up for our newsletter sign up for our substack link is in the show notes if you go to our Link in BIO and socials you'll see all the links too for the merch and again for the substack uh substack substack substack I feel like if you're not hearing me
(51:55) substack send all of those five star ratings all those reviews rate review subscribe uh again we are a small podcast we just started out this year and the ratings and reviews really really go so far and helping us spread the word about what we're trying to do here so thank you so much to everyone who's already taken the time and if you haven't we would so so so greatly appreciate if you you could give us all the stars mhm and the words of affirmations mhm please well um I think we did it one story one story St yeah that's it
(52:43) right yeah oh shoot you're right wow okay so should we go away then we should go away but I think we should come back oh yeah and then maybe do it again yeah yeah yeah okay yeah sounds like a plan okay yeah yeah so I'll see you here like next week the same time mhm okay but until then brb crying [Music]
Until next time…brb crying :’)